


Stumped

by karasunovolleygays



Series: Valentine's Kisses 2020 [44]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi is awkward, First Person, M/M, tokyo training camp arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22765300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karasunovolleygays/pseuds/karasunovolleygays
Summary: Akaashi tries to confess his crush, and he may or may not be screaming internally.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Kageyama Tobio
Series: Valentine's Kisses 2020 [44]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589239
Comments: 6
Kudos: 202
Collections: non-karasuno kageships





	Stumped

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crows_Imagine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crows_Imagine/gifts).



> This was written for my 2020 Valentine's Kisses: 46. A lingering kiss before a long trip apart.

This year’s summer volleyball camp has certainly been a surprise. I definitely didn’t go into it expecting to fall for anybody, let alone a guy on another team. 

Yet here I am, staring down Kageyama Tobio and he’s staring right back. Words? What do I need those for? I couldn’t string together a coherent sentence if I tried. How do you tell somebody you like them when they’re about as oblivious to social cues as a cat licking its butthole at a dinner party?

So I don’t.

“It’s been quite an experience working with a setter of your talent,” I blurt out, extending a handshake. I sound like a business partner, not a stupid teenage boy with a crush on another stupid teenage boy. 

How can I navigate the choppy waters of Bokuto-san’s ephemeral moods and not spit out a few simple words? Please tell me; I’m dying here.

When Kageyama fixates on me, eyes wide when he holds my entire hand [does he not know how this works?]. “Akaashi-san, thank you for teaching me.” He drops into a bow, and I breathe a little easier without his big blue eyes glued to my face.

But then he looks up, big blue eyes and all, and a soft, crooked little smile lingers on his lips. 

Objectively, Kageyama is an attractive person. He’s tall, fit, and he has pleasing features when they’re not knotted into a grumpy scowl. When he smiles, though . . . he’s like a different person on the outside. I just happen to be into either iteration, but this one makes my entire chest feel — well, I don’t know. Warm, tight, full. 

He still has a hold of my hands, and I am very, very aware of it. His fingers are hard, which one would expect from someone who works as ridiculously hard as Kageyama does. But rough? How the hell can he have hands this hard but a touch so soft?

Oh god, now I sound like my sister.

The smile slips a little, and Kageyama bites his lower lip (which has no right being that cute, what the hell). “Are you all right, Akaashi-san? Am I bothering you?”

“No.” It answers both questions well enough. Which one he thinks it’s responding to, I have no idea. I could just ask, like a non-moron. “You know, uh, can we go somewhere and talk?”

His brows scrunch together and I swallow an untimely giggle. “We’re already somewhere, and we’re already talking.”

All I can do is shake my head. I think I might possibly be morosexual. Why am I like this? “Somewhere else. Alone.”

“Oh.” His jaw slowly sags open, the dots connecting at last. “Oh!”

Finally, he lets me have my hand (and a chunk of my sanity) back, and he follows me to a quiet little copse of trees just out of sight of the school building. The only reason I know about it is because a few of the guys sneak out here to meet their girlfriends after lights out. I wouldn’t call myself an accessory so much as having a stake in these guys not getting into trouble. Camp wouldn’t be too good if all the top shelf players end up grounded or worse.

There’s a giant stump in the midst of a clearing, and it’s circled by a well-worn footpath (from the stampede of horny teenagers who frequent Shinzen High School, most likely, if my comrades are any indication). 

I take a seat, and Kageyama follows suit. He hasn’t stopped looking at me since we left the front of the building. I know because I can feel him staring at me.

Come on, Keiji, take a deep breath. Kageyama is a straightforward guy, so he’ll appreciate a frank statement. I just hope he’s more forward than straight, or this is going to be embarrassing for us both.

“I like you.”

The words hit me in the face like Bokuto-san’s best cross spike, but at least it’s not too late to amend a previous assumption. I am definitely the oblivious one here. 

Blinking. Why am I blinking so much? Crap, does he think I’m batting my eyelashes at him? _Am_ I batting my eyelashes at him and not willing to admit it? 

Why can’t a freak bolt of lightning just roast my ass right here and now?

“Akaashi-san, did you hear me?” Kageyama perks up when I nod like a puppet. Whoever is holding the strings is some kind of bastard, because when that smile creeps back, I just . . . sigh.

Yeah, I sighed like a twelve year old girl over a shoujo manga prince. Hell is officially empty, and all the devils are here, making me do and say stupid stuff so I can be _just_ uncool enough to make Kageyama reconsider his feelings.

I’m sure he doesn't know what to think when I slap myself in the face, but it does the trick. Some decent sense has officially been hammered back into my skull. Now I need to answer the boy before both of us explode.

“I heard you, Kageyama-kun.” I add that little honorific there because I hope it shows we’re on equal ground here, in the middle of this urban park masquerading as a forest, on this tree stump. His expression doesn’t change in the slightest, so that idea goes right out the window like Bokuto-san’s jersey did that one time when he tried to fly it like a flag from the bus window after a win.

People think Bokuto-san is our village idiot on the team. Oh how wrong they are. 

Leaning forward with my elbows on my thighs and fiddling with my hands, I hope it looks like I’m thinking and not just screaming internally when I finally say, “The ironic thing is that I actually brought you here to tell you that very thing.” I snort. It’s funny. I’m a giant tool now, but it’s still funny. “You beat me to it.”

A barrage of expressions flit across Kageyama’s features, an entire lifetime’s worth of emoting come and gone in thirty seconds. Now I’m the one who needs to be put out of his misery, because I have no idea what any of it means. 

Other than his basic personality of eat, sleep, and volleyball, I have to admit that I don’t really understand how his mind works. He’s absolutely brilliant at some things and lead-headed in others. I never have figured out a way to predict which is which.

Maybe that’s why I like him in the first place. He’s a puzzle, but not one I need to solve. There’s an enjoyable air of mystery to him, and I like being able to mull it over rather than needing to fix it before the second set ends so we don’t get our asses kicked.

Oh, hell. I need to say something or he’s going to think I’m figuring out a kind way to tell him I’m not interested. _I am interested, stupid brain! Say it, say it, say it!_

“Interesting,” is not the word I want to pop out of my idiot mouth, but it’s the one that comes whether I like it or not.

Time to slap myself in the face again.

“God, why is this so weird?” I think out loud. “All I’m trying to do is tell you I like you back, but my brain will not cooperate. It thinks it’s in charge. Well, it is, but I want a little bit of say in —”

(Thankfully) I never finish that sentence. Why? Because Kageyama’s lips are on mine. We’re kissing. It’s actually — now I know why guys risk disciplinary action to make out in the woods. 

Kageyama withdraws, and I start breathing like a sixty year old smoker with one lung. I know I have to look ridiculous, all slack-jawed with a dribble of spit running down my chin that I can’t stop thinking about. Is it his or mine? Is it wrong to say I don’t want to know because I like not knowing?

His thumb laps up that little trickle, and he guffaws. “You looked like you were thinking too much.”

“Yeah.” I’m still thinking way too much, but maybe in the noise of a thousand simultaneous thoughts, it’ll just die down to a dull roar and I can stop being stuck on stupid around a guy who will absolutely not think less of me if I am. He’s just like that.

You know, he really is like that. It’s one of the first things I noticed. Other than his resting bitchface, he is innately chill. Sure, he yells at Hinata for failing at things a first year middle schooler could do, even after they perform some maneuver no human being should be able to do. Strangely enough, I think it’s because they’re friends, but when his other teammates flub a play, he doesn’t blame them for it. He just looks forward to the next play.

This ‘words’ thing is really not working for me right now. I’ve read half the classic literature in the school library and plan to finish the other half before I graduate, but I can’t formulate one damned sentence to tell him how I feel. No wonder people write about love so much; it’s ridiculous.

But then I realize that Kageyama is not a words kind of guy anyway. Maybe words aren’t what I need to say what I need to say. Maybe I should’ve thought about that before burying my good sense in an avalanche of irrelevancies.

I touch his cheek, which is as deceptively soft as his hands are, and I let my fingers enjoy the feeling of warm skin against mine. Hedonistic? Probably. _So_ don’t care anymore.

This time, I kiss him, and it’s a much different thing. His response is wrought with hunger, and I give it right back. Somehow, he ends up on my lap, and my hands are buried in the back pockets of his jeans before a wolf whistle shatters what is arguably the worst love confession a human being has ever conceived.

“Oi, get moving, Keiji,” Konoha-san snaps. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you, and of all places, I find your square ass getting Stumped.” 

I expect Kageyama to jump out of my lap like it’s made of hot coals, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just blinks up at Konoha-san and says, “Wait a minute. We’re busy.” And then, brass balls and all, he kisses me again like Konoha-san isn’t even there.

“Man, why did I have to notice you two skulking off?” Konoha-san complains. “Always with the dirty work.”

Kageyama pulls away, and his hands are framing my face like it’s some sort of priceless thing. Like, I have been made aware that I am in the higher percentile of physical attractiveness. Of course, it’s always followed by the dreaded ‘you would be prettier if you smiled more’. That phrase should be a capital offense, I hate it. And when I do, suddenly I look like I’m ‘up to something’.

“I’ll see you at Nationals,” Kageyama murmurs, and just like that, he slips off my lap and heads back toward the front of the school like he isn’t some sort of god amongst men due to his general lack of self-consciousness.

Konoha-san snorts as he watches Kageyama walk away along with me. “That is one weird guy. And here I thought you and Bokuto would end up knocking boots, but what the hell do I know. I suppose but one idiot’s as good as another.”

“Please stop talking,” I beg him, hiding my four alarm blush behind my hands.

“Don’t wanna.” Konoha-san pushes me into motion, and he marches behind me until we’re back in front of the school.

When the bus ride is underway, I don’t dare relax. I know it’s coming, I can feel it. Konoha-san is going to tell everyone on the team that he busted me getting Stumped with Kageyama.

But it never comes. Instead, when we arrive back at Fukurodani, Konoha-san pulls me aside and says, “You know I’m just giving you shit, right? Whatever makes you happy, I guess, even if it is bizarre as hell.”

He starts to leave, but he pauses to add, “Oh, and I won’t tell anyone unless you say so, but I cannot and will not guarantee that I won’t sing ‘Keiji got Stumped’ at you every chance I get.” He waves over his shoulder and heads off to the nearby bus stop.

“Well that happened.” Am I talking to myself? Yes. At this point, do I even have the energy to care. Oh, hell no.

The walk home for me is about half an hour, and I take it even if I can catch a bus there and be home in ten minutes. It’s hotter than the ninth circle of hell outside, but guess what? I’m smiling anyway. 

Despite it all, this story is just like any other of its ilk. Two people fall for each other and don’t know it, something happens to shake loose a few brain cells, and we all pretend they live happily ever after. Will anything come of it when we live a two hour train ride apart? I don’t know, really.

What I do know is that I really want to find out.

Pulling out my phone, I do something I never, ever do: take a selfie. I have a ridiculous smile on my lips, and I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ll look like when I’m drunk someday, but I send it to Kageyama anyway.

The reply is a short minute away, and when I see Kageyama sent me a picture in return, (at the risk of sounding cliché) my heart skipped a beat a little. There’s such a soft look on Kageyama’s face, but one thing is certain: he did not take this picture himself.

Right after comes a follow-up text. _Yamaguchi took the picture and forwarded it to me. He said I looked happy and he didn’t want to forget it. Neither do I._

For someone who is as guileless as Kageyama, he sure knows what to say to make a guy weak in the knees. Literally. How is this even a real thing? I thought writers made it up for sensationalism like they usually do. Yet another thing I’m wrong about today. 

Whatever. What matters is that I have the literal best contact image known to man, and I plan on doing lots of mooning over it when I get home. Oh, I am a broken man, but I’m one who gets to keep a Kageyama Tobio smile in my pocket in spite of myself. I can’t ask for anything better than that, now can I?


End file.
